


Heroes and Lovers and Fools

by hrhrionastar



Series: The Honeyverse [11]
Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Episode: s01e22 Reckoning, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-31 04:53:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/340117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/pseuds/hrhrionastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kieran's Eve is bitterly cold in D'Hara this year. The Rahl family shares warmth, and love, and speculation about heroes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heroes and Lovers and Fools

**Author's Note:**

> part of the honeyverse (after Baby New Year in [The Creatormas Spirit](http://hrhrionastar.livejournal.com/73497.html#cutid1)). This fic is for all the wonderful people at PP - happy Valentine's Day <3

[](http://s941.photobucket.com/albums/ad256/hrhrionastar/Fic%20headers%20since%2012-8-11/?action=view&current=RionasHoneyverse-1.jpg)  
graphic made by [](http://dorothydeath.livejournal.com/profile)[**dorothydeath**](http://dorothydeath.livejournal.com/)

  
"Mama, why is it so cold?" Nicholas asked. He lay beside Kahlan in the big bed, his compact little body pressed against her. He burrowed his hands between the pillows she was using to support her back, to warm them, but his eyes were bright with sincere inquiry.  
  
Kahlan pulled the heavy coverlet more securely over her shoulder and glanced worriedly down at her son. He had stopped shivering since he'd climbed into bed with her and his infant sister, but it was a wild night. She had tasted coming snow in the air that morning. Now the fire flickered crazily, sending shadows over the walls and refracting little pinpricks of light from the mosaic ceiling, and the wind howled against the windowpanes.  
  
Dara had been restless all day. She was a much fussier baby than Nicholas had been. She started crying as soon as Kahlan left the nursery to carry out her duties as queen of the D'Haran Empire, according to the children's nurse, Becca, and only the presence of one or both of her parents could calm her.  
  
Kahlan was not sorry for the excuse to leave the court to its own devices, especially tonight. It was Kieran's Eve, and the past hovered close at Kahlan's shoulder. It had been a long time since she'd felt Richard's presence in her marriage bed. But Kieran's Eve was a night for heroes and lovers and fools.  
  
Even after four and a half years without him, even after she had opened her heart to the love that belonged to this life, Kahlan longed for Richard. She loved him, now and always.  
  
Kahlan cradled Dara's bald head against her breast, and sighed. "I don't know, sweetheart," she admitted. "Some people say the cold is the Keeper's breath, stealing the light and warmth of the world."  
  
Her words coincided with a particularly violent gust of wind. The window casement broke open, sending icy air flaked with snow across the floor. Nicholas shivered, and Kahlan clutched Dara close enough that the baby uttered a faint sound of protest.  
  
Kahlan made herself relax, before Dara could pick up on her nerves and start to cry. She gently detached the baby's mouth from her breast, knowing she would have to get up and close the window, and dreading leaving the warm refuge under the blankets.  
  
The door swung open, and Kahlan's heart hammered before she recognized her husband's firm tread.  
  
"Daddy!" Nicholas exclaimed joyfully, daring to pull head and shoulders free of the blankets. "Mama says it's cold because of the Keeper!"  
  
"And what do you think?" Darken asked, as he strode to the window. He swung the casement shut, and Kahlan relaxed against the pillows. The firelight settled a little, but the shadows played across Darken's face. He was wrapped in his heaviest cloak, lined with fur and colored a red so dark as to be almost black even in daylight. Ebony hair spilled over his shoulders. Kahlan couldn't see his eyes, and she felt an additional chill as she realized he resembled early drawings of the Keeper.  
  
"Why can't the Creator make it summer again?" Nicholas asked. "Why do we have to wait? What does the Keeper want?"  
  
Nicholas was still young enough to think his parents had all the answers. And he had so many questions.  
  
Darken drew the curtains and sat down on his side of the bed. Kahlan felt it dip a little, as he reached over and found her ankle under the coverlet. Even through the heavy layer of blankets and his leather glove, she felt the warm tenderness of the touch.  
  
Kahlan let herself relax into the lassitude that spread throughout her limbs. Her body was almost entirely recovered from giving birth, but only now that Darken was here, and her apprehension faded, did she feel how exhausted she was.  
  
"The Keeper wants souls," Darken intoned seriously. He reached for Nicholas, pulling him out from under the coverlet and onto his lap, tickling unmercifully. Nicholas shrieked with laughter. He was no longer shivering, and Kahlan wondered if he felt warmer in Darken's presence, the way she did. She wanted to protest Darken's honesty, but Nicholas seemed to need answers. He was insatiably curious, just like his father.  
  
Someday they would both need to know about Richard. If she could bring herself to tell them.  
  
"Cold air sweeps down from the mountains," Darken explained the sources of winter to Nicholas. "The sun dims, and the lands sleep under snow until the spring."  
  
"And Mama's flowers grow!" Nicholas said, bouncing.  
  
Darken tucked him back under the coverlet beside Kahlan, and took the opportunity to lean over and plant a kiss on Dara's forehead, where the baby slept against Kahlan's breasts.  
  
"Tonight is Kieran's Eve," Darken said, his voice dipping low as he prepared to tell Nicholas a story. "Kieran was a great hero of the Midlands. He was most famous for the battle of the Green Shore, when he…"  
  
Kahlan felt her own eyelids droop, as she listened. Darken's voice was rich and complicated, like old wine or honey-mead. As sinfully, incongruously sweet as the man himself.  
  
When Nicholas's breathing had deepened to true sleep, Darken rose and strode again to the window. He opened the curtains a fraction, bringing the cold night back into the chamber.  
  
"Aren't you coming to bed?" Kahlan asked, around a yawn.  
  
"I met the Keeper when I was a child," Darken said. All expression had faded from his voice—the voice that could inspire armies to sacrifice their lives, hold children spellbound, and make Kahlan dizzy with want. "I killed for Him…before I grew to manhood, I killed my father. He deserved worse."  
  
Kahlan was fully awake now. Part of her wished Darken wouldn't tell her these things. It wasn't that she didn't know, but the past was gone. She didn't want to think of what he had done…of the blood on his hands, some of it much more innocent than that of Panis Rahl.  
  
Nonetheless, she listened.  
  
"I chose who I was then," Darken said. "I never expected this life—never dreamed it was possible for me to have."  
  
At last, he turned to face Kahlan. She saw the wrenching self-doubt and unwilling caring, unwilling because so all-consuming, in his face, twin to her own. The connection she felt to this man was surely wrong, and the strength of it impossible.  
  
Nicholas and Dara slept between them, secure in their parents' bed. Darken was a good father to them, though Kahlan guessed he feared to make his own father's mistakes. That fear spoke better of him than it did of Panis Rahl.  
  
"You are what you do," Kahlan said slowly. "Choose again."  
  
And she eased her arm out from beneath her son's shoulders and held out a slender white hand to Darken Rahl.  
  


* * *

  
It was the work of moments to step out of his boots and strip off his gloves and cloak. Darken didn't undress further, in the punishing cold of the February night, before sliding under the coverlet and blankets with his wife and children. He kissed the top of Nicholas's hair. It was already nearly as dark as Kahlan's.  
  
Darken would never be a good man. He knew it, had accepted it long ago. If his father was right about him, then so be it. He _would_ be the greatest tyrant the world had ever seen, and no one would dare oppose him.  
  
The Midlands were his, and so, more surprising, was peace. But opposition remained. It was Darken's attitude toward it that had changed. Perhaps it was loving a woman who loved freedom, or merely that without the threat of the Seeker prophesied to kill him, Darken had allowed himself to see the purpose of dissenting opinions. Orden would have solidified his rule, while robbing him of his people's strength.  
  
Nicholas would inherit an empire neither falsely compliant nor bitterly resentful. That Darken had sworn to himself.  
  
His children deserved better than what he could give them. Nicholas and Dara must never feel in competition, must never doubt that they both held equal and precious places in his heart.  
  
"Kieran was a Seeker of Truth, you know," Kahlan murmured sleepily. "Why did you choose that tale to tell Nicholas?"  
  
"He needs to know of heroes," Darken answered. "Kieran is renowned for his goodness."  
  
Once, he would have been bitter at the mere mention of the Seeker, any Seeker, and contemptuous of a 'goodness' that had nonetheless been insufficient to save Kieran's people from an ancient wizard's conquering army. But Nicholas would need better men to emulate than his father.  
  
Kahlan squeezed his fingers, and he met her piercing blue gaze. Her eyes were brilliant and full of color, even in the slowly dying light of the fire.  
  
"Kieran's Eve is a night for heroes and lovers and fools," his wife said. "But Kieran himself was less a hero than he was a fool. His reputation is—not undeserved, but exaggerated."  
  
Darken raised his eyebrows. "Interesting," he drawled, "and which are we?"  
  
He fully expected her to say that he was a fool, and that she was a hero for enduring the controlled chaos that he'd made of her life. He'd demanded a queen, and she fulfilled the role with her usual grace. Nicholas needed a mother, and a Mother Confessor to teach him to use his powers wisely. Dara fretted when Kahlan left her for too long, an attitude with which Darken fully sympathized. As for what he himself needed…all Darken knew was that Kahlan was integral to not only his happiness but also his sanity. And that surely made him a fool.  
  
Kahlan snuggled further under the blankets, her hair spread in a dark mass over the stacked pillows, and Dara cradled securely against her chest.  
  
"We are lovers," she said quietly, "and, as love and hope alike are folly, we are fools…Heroes are no more than ordinary men and women who do extraordinary things. Goodness and greatness alike come from imperfection. And so I suppose we can be heroes."  
  
Darken kissed his fingers and pressed them to her lips. "Happy Kieran's Eve, wife," he whispered.  
  
"And to you, husband," Kahlan returned.  
  
She slept then. The winds outside had died down, and Darken guessed the courtyard and the garden where Kahlan's flowers slept in the ground, waiting for spring, would be covered in snow by morning.  
  
He remembered how much Kahlan had despised him. Rising above her contempt, inducing her to abandon her hatred, had been difficult. Yet now he had her love.  
  
Darken was no hero. But he knew he would break his heart trying to be worthy of Kahlan's trust.


End file.
